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Confronted by omnipresent threats of job loss and change, even the brightest among us are anxious. In response, we're hunkering down, blocking ourselves from new challenges. This response hurts us and our organizations, but we fear making ourselves even more vulnerable by committing mistakes while learning something new. In "Flying Without a Net," Thomas DeLong explains how to draw strength from vulnerability. First, understand the forces that escalate anxiety in high achievers and the unproductive behaviors you turn to for relief. Then adopt practices that give you the courage to "do the right things poorly" before "doing the right things well." Drawing on his extensive research and consulting work, DeLong lays out: (1) Roots of high achievers' anxiety: fear of being wrong and lack of a sense of purpose, and a craving for human connection, (2) Destructive behaviors we adopt to relieve our anxiety: busyness, comparing ourselves to others, and blaming others for our frustrations, (3) Behaviors we must adopt to gain strength from vulnerability: putting the past behind us and seeking honest feedback. Packed with practical advice and inspiring stories, "Flying Without a Net" is an invaluable resource for all leaders seeking to thrive in this Age of Anxiety.

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Greg James, a global manager at Sun Microsystems, Inc., sets out to meet with his entire 43-member customer implementation team spread across India, France, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States of America to resolve a dire customer system outage as required by a service agreement. Rather than finding a swift resolution to the rapidly escalating customer situation that motivated his trip, he finds himself facing distributed work, global collaboration, conflict and management issues that are threatening to unravel his team.

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Retaining talent is an issue for any company whose success relies on the creativity and excellence of its employees. This is especially true for Cirque du Soleil, the spectacularly successful "circus without animals," whose 2,100 employees include 500 artists--mimes, clowns, acrobats, gymnasts, musicians, and production professionals. Managing a company full of creative people is a juggling act in itself, between keeping its artists happy and pursuing a successful strategy for attracting more business and talent.

learning objective:

To focus on the particular importance of treating employees like customers in order to grow employee satisfaction along with commercial success.

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Chip Rae, director of recruiting at SG Cowen, must decide which recruits to keep after the final interview process for new outside associate hires. Along with team captains assigned to each school, he reviews the criteria used to make hiring decisions. Their new strategy is to look beyond the top 10 core business schools for the best of class in the top 25, avoiding people in the middle of their class. After some initial resistance, senior managers eventually see the wisdom of the new strategy.

learning objective:

To introduce the complexity of recruiting in professional services firms and teach the basics of recruiting processes. An inside look at the strategy of creating an excellent recruiting system.

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Gerry Pasciucco was appointed to lead American International Group's Financial Products (AIGFP) group after the government bailout of AIG in 2008 and charged with the task of shutting down the division while minimizing the government's losses. AIGFP's failed trades had threatened to bring down the entire company, and the government had responded by loaning AIG $182 billion in exchange for 79.9% of the company, because it feared that AIG's failure could trigger the collapse of the entire global financial system. Several months into his tenure, the division paid large retention bonuses to all of its professionals according to a contract negotiated before he joined AIGFP. These bonuses were seen by the public as going to the very people whose mistakes resulted in the need for a bailout in the first place and resulted in an unprecedented storm of public outrage, culminating in a Congressional hearing in which AIG's CEO, Ed Liddy, was repeatedly attacked for making the bonus payments. Liddy responded by asking people who had received the largest payments to return the money to the company. Now Pasciucco has to decide how to lead his team through this crisis while grappling with the larger issues of the justice of the retention payments.

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This HBR Case Study includes both the case and the commentary. For teaching purposes, this reprint is also available in two other versions: case study-only, reprint R1209X, and commentary-only, R1209Z.

Natalia Georgio is the executive director of a growing dance troupe. She has a mandate from her board to expand the company by going international and pursuing TV and film opportunities. To realize these plans for growth, she recently hired a new marketing director, who wants to launch a customer research initiative. The company's founder, however, believes that innovation comes from employees, not customers. Natalia needs to decide whether to bring her new marketing director's customer research plan to the board or follow the founder's lead and cultivate creativity from within. Thomas J. DeLong and Vineeta Vijayaraghavan present this fictionalized case study with expert commentary provided by Mario D'Amico and Jens Martin Skibsted.

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For teaching purposes, this is the case-only version of the HBR case study. The commentary-only version is reprint R1209Z. The complete case study and commentary is reprint R1209L.

Natalia Georgio is the executive director of a growing dance troupe. She has a mandate from her board to expand the company by going international and pursuing TV and film opportunities. To realize these plans for growth, she recently hired a new marketing director, who wants to launch a customer research initiative. The company's founder, however, believes that innovation comes from employees, not customers. Natalia needs to decide whether to bring her new marketing director's customer research plan to the board or follow the founder's lead and cultivate creativity from within. Thomas J. DeLong and Vineeta Vijayaraghavan present this fictionalized case study.

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For teaching purposes, this is the commentary-only version of the HBR case study. The case-only version is reprint R1209X. The complete case study and commentary is reprint R1209L.

Natalia Georgio is the executive director of a growing dance troupe. She has a mandate from her board to expand the company by going international and pursuing TV and film opportunities. To realize these plans for growth, she recently hired a new marketing director, who wants to launch a customer research initiative. The company's founder, however, believes that innovation comes from employees, not customers. Natalia needs to decide whether to bring her new marketing director's customer research plan to the board or follow the founder's lead and cultivate creativity from within. Thomas J. DeLong and Vineeta Vijayaraghavan present this fictionalized case study with expert commentary provided by Mario D'Amico and Jens Martin Skibsted.

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Two graduate school friends find themselves competing at a financial services firm. The protagonist reads his performance evaluation and his colleagues' and realizes that his boss favors his friend. How do you handle the situation? How do you have the conversation with your boss, your friend, and yourself?

learning objective:

Highlight the power and challenges of interpersonal relations at work.

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The Dutch professional service firm Schuberg Philis has within a few years grown into a well-known player in the Dutch IT outsourcing market and regularly wins high customer satisfaction marks. The growing workload and 100% promise to customers have increased the pressure on its non-hierarchical teams of engineers, as well as the hiring speed, which some fear could dilute their corporate culture. The three owner-directors must decide whether it is time to stop customer acquisition for a while to "get their house in order". At that moment, though, one of Shuberg Philis perhaps most important business opportunities so far arises.

learning objective:

To highlight the impact of management philosophy on the design and performance of an organization and show which challenges can arise when an organization grows.

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